Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The previous post examined the 108-year Rosicrucian cycle as imparted by H. Spencer Lewis. This describes a system of alternating 108-year periods of open and hidden activity for Rosicrucian lodges. The post proposed that this cycle has been in effect in the years from 1904, the dawn of the Aeon of Horus, to 2012. In this year the behind-the-scenes Work of more than a century will be revealed to all.

Here, this lunatic fiction will be ballooned out even further. It will be shown that Crowley appears, either knowingly or otherwise, to have encoded the key developments of this 108-year timeframe within the 22 major arcana cards of his version of the tarot, The Book of Thoth.

While Crowley, and artist Lady Frieda Harris, altered some of the iconography and names in their deck, the basic structure, number and order of the cards highly conform to the traditional tarot. If anything, Crowley hoped to reverse some of the discrepancies and contradictions that he saw prevented the older tarot decks from fully corresponding to other occult systems like astrology, the Kabbalah, Egyptian mythology, etc. The Thoth deck, in this regard, is both modernist and traditional.

In most versions of the tarot, the 22 cards of the major arcana correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and both the cards and the alphabet can be placed on the 22 paths connecting the ten sephiroth on the Tree of Life. Certain authors also correspond the 22 trumps with the 22 chapters of The Book of Revelation.

It is well-known among occultists that the "story" of the major arcana on one level depicts an alchemical transformation of the would-be initiate. This blog will also touch upon this interpretation at some point. What is not so discussed, though, is that the sequence of 22 cards also reveals a collective and historical undertaking of the Great Work. It is surprising that this reading of The Book of Thoth is not more widespread, especially given Crowley's own preoccupation with the shifting of the ages.

This post will contend that the sequence of 22 cards in the major arcana of the Thoth deck depict the 108-year period of Great Work that will fully usher in the Aeon of Horus this year.

Bullock-Befriending Bard

The number 22, like the year 1904, is also prominent in the life and work of James Joyce. Joyce placed much significance in the fact that he was born on the Second of February -- 2/2 or 22. In addition to being the 33rd day of the year, on leap years ( and Joyce's year of birth -- 1882 -- was a leap year) there are 333 days left in the year. It was also celebrated as Imbolc in pagan Ireland, and later Christianized as St. Brigid's Day. Brigid plays a very important role in Joyce's fiction.

Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was first serialized on Feb. 2nd, 1914. His most celebrated novel, Ulysses, was published on his 40th birthday on Feb. 2nd, 1922 (2/2/22). The date June 16th, the setting of the novel, also sums to 22 (6+16), and both Joyce's protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, and Joyce himself were 22 years of age in 1904. Robert Anton Wilson points out in his Coincidance (a title taken from the Wake), that the first sentence of Ulysses contains 22 words the final being "crossed":

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

As several scholars have pointed out, this opening scene is really a mock mass, a theme that continues throughout Ulysses and eventually degrades into an open black mass. Joyce is consciously inverting religious tradition in order to make us all conscious of its power. Contrary to appearance, Joyce is entirely respectful of esoteric tradition and would have known well that in Jewish tradition only those 40 and over are allowed to study the Kabbalah. His final book, Finnegans Wake, is pure Kabbalah.

Both Crowley and Joyce, then, recognized the value of 22. The 22 major arcana map out the progression of this 108-year period between ages. I have not found a precise pattern in the "playing" of these cards. They are not evenly played at regular intervals during the 108 years. Instead, it appears that like in Mckenna's Timewave Zero there is an acceleration or compression towards the end of the cycle. More cards are played near the culmination of the 108 years.

Much work needs to be done here to make this a comprehensive theory. What follows is a rough sketch that is only intended to be suggestive. At this point it is nothing more than a fictional narrative.

The Dark Mandala

The first card which is readily recognized in relation to events comes very late in the sequence. It is hoped that at some point the whole progression of 22 trumps will be matched with events that have taken place from 1904 to 2012, but at this stage I'll start with the playing of card 16, The Tower.

The iconic connection between The Tower and the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 was quickly noticed by many observers. The fire from above, the collapsing tower, the falling bodies, even the sinister overseeing Eye are symbols common to both.

9/11 is still a great mystery that continues to influence nearly everything on the world stage. There is no consensus as to what happened or what it ultimately meant. Even the official version of events, as is often pointed out, is a conspiracy theory and the only question is how far and how deep the conspiracy extends. It is obvious that the official U.S. 9/11 Commission was in no way interested in finding this out. The actual details will likely remain in shadow.

The greater significance of 9/11, though, is its identity as an era-changing event. While it falls late in the 108-year cycle, it is the opening pulse of the more compressed fractal iteration of 11 years. As noted in the last post, this shorter period roughly corresponds to the 11-year sunspot cycle.

In a sense, it is a major bifurcation point. It tended to push people in one of two directions. On the one hand, it provoked an even deeper entrenchment into the dualistic mindset -- "either you're with us or with the terrorists." Conspiracy theorists also did not escape this polarizing trance. The active dualism was only replaced by the "patriots" or "truth seekers" vs. the "globalists," the "NWO," or the "Illuminati." This might represent a higher turn in the spiral, but it remains mired in dualism.

On the other hand, 9/11 forced a smaller group of people even further down the rabbit hole. It exposed the matrix-like unreality of the entire world system. Everything is a part of the conspiracy. But beyond even the matrix is the realization that even the dreamers are a part of the dream. The Illuminati are dazzled by their own Spell. We are the Illuminati. It reminds me of Nietzsche's "History of an Error," in which he explains the interdependence of "reality" and "appearance,"

The real world—we have done away with it: what world was left? the apparent one, perhaps? … But no! with the real world we have also done away with the apparent one!

The dualistic reality models as shown in movies like The Matrix quite naturally morph into the more complex, less certain, multi-layered models as depicted in a film like Inception. Of course these are mainstream representations. Fans of Philip K. Dick and psychedelics would have known all this long ago. With 9/11, the clear blue-sky veil of reality was irreparably rent. The door opened between the two pillars. Strange things are pouring through.

9/11 does not wholly represent the crowning act of the New World Order, a mass sacrifice and the capping of the pyramid, but instead it is a desperate gesture, a fumble and flailing to maintain illusory control. But it is also something more than this. It was, and really still is, the centre of a dark mandala of world attention.

It was a ritual on a global scale orchestrated more than anything, perhaps, by the process of consciousness itself. 9/11 satisfied a mass desire for something momentous to happen, something apocalyptic, something to shake us all up, something to make us face our many problems, something to get things rolling. If 9/11 did not happen we would have been forced to make it happen. Maybe we did?

Quite early on, researchers like Goro Adachi, Jake Kotze and others pointed out the "megaritual" quality of 9/11. Those deepest down the rabbit hole, addicts of the red pill, were "initiated" by this ritual and able to see the matrix beyond the matrix beyond the matrix..... Conspiracy theorists went mainstream and predictable, and synchronicity artists are now entrenched in the radical margins.

The next card was not played for several years after 9/11. Presumably the full consequences of 9/11 had to first run their course before the next act was staged.

Following 9/11, Fear and his cohorts have had a heyday -- the War in Afghanistan, the War on Terror, the War in Iraq, multiple terrorist attacks across the globe, the deepening and darkening of the conspiracist subculture, all manner of natural disasters, multiple epidemic scares, the Patriot Act and its equivalents internationally, the steroidal expansion of the police state control grid, etc., etc. All this was an expected outgrowth of 9/11.

Higher Turn of the Spiral

The next shoe to drop, though, was economic -- the "financial 9/11" of 2008, signified most obviously by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The world must not only be transformed geopolitically, and in terms of "security," but the entire structure of the production, distribution and consumption of wealth must be completely overhauled. All human transactions must be transformed.

The card for this is not as obvious as The Tower, as its corresponding event is not as sudden or dramatic. And whereas The Tower has almost wholly negative connotations the next trump, The Star, is much more ambiguous in its meaning. The collapse of the global economic system is undoubtedly a terrible thing, but for many it represents the end of a great evil and its demise is the sign of Hope. This is precisely the meaning of The Star.

We know from some of the earliest tarot decks, as in the interpretation of Antoine Court de Gébelin, that the star of Card 17 is really the Dog Star, our old friend Sirius. Crowley uniquely corresponded this card with the Hebrew letter, Daleth "the Door" -- the letter of Da'at. There is a mystery in this.

We also know that the astrological sign corresponding to this card is Aquarius, the water-bearer. The Star is the sign, for those who have eyes to see, of the coming Age of Aquarius -- the dawning of which coincides with that of the Aeon of Horus. Of her design of the Star card Frieda Harris writes,

This is built up as a design on a spiral to show the rising force of a new age. The woman holds two cups, the north and south poles of magnetic attraction. Above her a new star is rising, beneath her are the crystallising dogmas of a former Age.

The spiral represents the transcendence of Euclidean conceptions of space. Crowley writes that "It will be seen that every form of energy in this picture is spiral." In the New Aeon even our old ideas of time and space must be laid aside. Joyce repeatedly makes this same point in both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

The spiral appeared in the sky of Norway on Dec. 9, 2009. This is a classic NCE (Non-Consensus Event). The official story is that it was an out-of-control Russian missile, but many still believe that it was a type of UFO or an opening wormhole. A creative interpretation is that it was a "crop-circle of the sky."

Whatever it was, it brought the figure of the spiral to the conscious attention of millions. It was a living symbol of the "playing" of the Star card. While old forms, most notably economic, are in the process of passing away a symbol, "real" or not is unimportant, of the new was revealed -- and coincidentally on the day before Obama received the Noble Peace Prize in Norway.

The Sinister Passage

The next card in the major arcana is The Moon. This is called by Frieda Harris "the most sinister card."

Card 18 reveals the dangerous passage between the towers of death and horror. In this it reminds one most of the terrifying journey Frodo and Sam made between the towers of Minas Morgul in order to pass into the dark land of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. As in the meaning of this card, theirs was a journey through a shadowy realm that was necessary in order to restore the light. Harris also writes,

This card represents the state of impure horror, hidden darkness which must be passed through before light can be reborn.

The Moon further represents illusion and the breaking of illusion. It is "at the brink of important change." This dangerous passage well describes our collective experience of the last year and a half. We all have had the sense, consciously or not, that the world is on the brink. We live in constant anxiety of total economic collapse as the ramifications of the 2008 crisis have not in any way resolved themselves.

In 2011, protests, riots and revolutions spread across the globe most in direct response to economic pressures. It is a mistake to conclude that these movements were in all cases fully created and/or manipulated by the elite. Obviously the intelligence agencies had their fingers in the pie -- it is their job to attempt to control events -- and we see this most in "rogue" nations like Libya and Syria.

But what of all the unrest in allied or complicit countries -- in Bahrain, in Djibouti, in Kuwait, in Israel, in Spain, in Chile, in the UK, in New York City? Was this all orchestrated as well? Or, as this blog keeps saying, is something bigger happening? Is the genuine unrest and the covert manipulation all part of a more complex pattern?

Added to the disruptions in economic and social systems are the "natural" disasters which have been afflicting much of the planet -- earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, storms of all sorts. Are the "Illuminati" the cause of all of these as well? Or, reflecting the non-divisible unity of mind and body, is the imbalance of the global brain -- planetary human civilization -- causing dis-ease within the body of the Earth? The narrow passage is also the passage along the birth canal. The scarab acts as midwife and a new Sun is about to be born.

The sign of The Moon card came with the Moon herself. On December 21, 2010 -- two years before the Mayan calendar end date -- there appeared a dramatic and rare Winter Solstice lunar eclipse. To me, the blood red Moon is as good a sign as any of the dark passage before the coming Aeon emerges brightly from the shadows for all to behold.

Here Comes The Sun

Card 19 is The Sun and the imagery of this card matches nicely with the symbolism that's been apparent in London 2012. There is good reason to suppose that this powerful trump was "played" during the Closing Ceremony.

Crowley's version of the card depicts the Sun rising over the World Mountain. The mountain is at once Mount Olympus, the Glastonbury Tor and the Mount of Purgatory.

The Closing Ceremony, while not as multi-layered and as rich in symbolism as the Opening, is certainly a ritual to mark the shifting of the ages. I won't go through every aspect of this symbolism, others have already brought much of it to light, but I'll focus on aspects of the Ceremony relating to the ongoing analysis of this blog.

With the very first act we know where we are. During the first performance by Emeli Sandé the camera takes a close-up of the truck she is singing on. The truck is wrapped, like everything else in the ceremony, with newsprint bearing headlines from the plays of Shakespeare and other works of British literature.

The first headline we notice should be familiar to the readers of this blog -- "We are such stuff as dreams are made of." This is from Prospero's famous soliloquy closing The Tempest, which was quoted at the end of a previous post. We are still in the dreamland of Purgatory. We are still on Prospero's mysterious island.

This all becomes blatant a few minutes later. The focus shifts to the middle of the stadium, the intersection point at three crosses of a huge Union Jack, where Winston Churchill emerges from the top of the Big Ben tower (note the time shown on the clock -- 9:11) and delivers the same Caliban speech as Brunel gives at the Opening Ceremony.

This sets up a number of symbolic parallels. The centre of the three crosses of the Union Jack, representing also the saints of Britain, is at the same "location" as the Glastonbury Tor was during the Opening Ceremony. This is the Axis Mundi. As George Michael revealed during his performance later in the evening,

Remember right now you are at the centre of the universe.

The Big Ben tower is the equivalent to the great Oak, the World Tree, which was the living portal atop of the Tor at the Opening Ceremony. We notice that while Brunel gave Caliban's speech at the base of the World Mountain now, after completing the Purgatory of the Games, Churchill/Brunel gives the same speech emerging from the "Tree" at the summit of the "Mountain."

Dante gives us our bearings here. At the top of Mount Purgatory is the Earthly Paradise, Eden. We can only return to the Garden after purging all of our sins -- transmuting selfish vices into virtues. The three crosses of the Union Jack also remind us of this -- the three X's of the XXXth Olympiad. These are the three crosses of Golgotha, another representation of the World Mountain which by tradition was the resting place of the skull of Adam.

The three crosses are also the two pillars and the veil of the Temple. The veil is torn and and we return to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the site of the Fall. Once again we come back to the portal of Da'at. This exactly what is being conveyed at the centre of the Olympic stadium during the Closing Ceremony of London 2012.

This should not surprise us. This point is always where we return to at the shifting of the ages. The world is once again at the chaotic tipping point between the Fall and the Redemption. The Closing Ceremony, London 2012 in general, the entire sequence of the thirty modern Olympic Games, the "playing" of the Major Arcana exist as rituals to honour this passage in an attempt to derive power from it.

Also situated at the middle of the stadium, the intersection of the three crosses, is a familiar symbol -- the Ferris Wheel. This simulation of the obviously esoteric London Eye is either anchored to or suspended above the centre during the entire Ceremony. Why?

This is an obvious response to the original Ferris Wheel last in operation at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis. The 2160 passenger capacity represents the 2160 years of an astrological age. The wheel's return to the centre of London 2012 indicates that the cycle has now closed. The wheel has turned, a new age has now begun, the 108 years of hidden activity is now complete.

Many of the "headlines" shown may also refer to this juncture, this transition between states:

To be or not to be,This is how the world ends, After this is silence

We are in a moment of collective passage through the portal, through the stargate. The Ceremony contained much symbolism of this sort, too much to briefly explicate here. Many researchers have pointed out the connections of the Ceremony and the Aurora shooting -- Michael Caine, Bruce Wayne's butler in the Dark Knight trilogy, counting down to a Batman pantomime. Why was this featured? Either as synchronicity or as an intended message, the implications are pretty staggering.

We can expect more and more of these sorts of connections, and an ever increasing number of people to become aware of them. I think it is a mistake, though, to interpret these connections too hastily or too definitively. Too much is in play here and things are moving too quickly to make any final conclusions. All we can say with certainty is that the weirdness is approaching a crescendo.

Up From The Ashes

The most significant point of the entire ceremony was the extinguishing the Flame in the Olympic Cauldron. The symbolism here was absolutely mind-blowing. The Flame may have been snuffed out, but the Phoenix arose from the ashes. The transition into the New Aeon was completed.

The symbolism of the phoenix is precise -- it exemplifies the culmination of the Great Work. In The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall spells this out very clearly,

Mediaeval Hermeticists regarded the phoenix as a symbol of the accomplishment of alchemical transmutation, a process equivalent to human regeneration.... to all initiates and philosophers the phoenix is the symbol of the transmutation and regeneration of the creative energy -- commonly called the accomplishment of the Great Work.

We see this reflected in the iconography of numerous alchemical prints of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. It is easy to see the parallels with the Closing Ceremony.

The Phoenix is also commonly known as the bird that rises from the ashes of its parent and former self. This symbolism is universally related with the turning of the ages. As the bird of fire returns to its nest, incinerates itself, and a new bird rises from the ashes the grand cycle is renewed. Just as the Phoenix is both an individual and a collective symbol, so the Great Work is completed on both individual and collective levels.

The length of the cycle that the Phoenix's fiery death and rebirth spans has differed in traditional accounts. While 500 years became the standard classical Greek reckoning, there is evidence of an older and much more precise Egyptian measure.

The Egyptian precursor to the Phoenix is called the Bennu, a mythical bird whose self-immolation and resurrection coincided with the Sothic cycle of 1461 years. The Sothic cycle describes the number of years, due to precession, it takes for Sirius to rise with the Sun at the same position. (It's interesting that the Wikipedia entry for this notes that, "This cycle was first noticed by Eduard Meyer in 1904...")

The Phoenix has in this way always been connected with Sirius. This blog has explored how the 70 days of the Torch Relay represented the traditional journey of Sirius through the underworld, or Duat. We also looked at how the actual heliacal rising of Sirius with the Sun over London occurred on Aug. 12th, the day of the Closing Ceremony.

The symbolism of the Phoenix, then, not only points to the heliacal rising but to the shifting of the ages. This refers to the 108-year transitional period, but also to the wider shift between the Ages of Pisces and Aquarius and possibly even greater cycles of time as the Maya calculated.

A Strange Loop

Many researchers and web commentators appeared almost disappointed that false flag doom did not strike London 2012. They were convinced that all signs seem to indicate this and when it did not occur they concluded that the "Illuminati" themselves promoted this false conspiracy in order to further discredit and ridicule the "Truth" movement. After "crying wolf" for so many times the "Truth" movement would be understandably entirely ignored by the public as a source of reliable information.

This whole line of analysis, this blog maintains, is misguided. The elite may have promoted these conspiracy theories, but not primarily to discredit anyone. The conspiracy theorists are already sufficiently effective at this. Instead, the promotion of the esoteric, conspiratorial dimension of London 2012 was to attract attention.

Billions of mainstream sports fans predictably tuned into the mass spectacle, but the spinners of the matrix also required a more discerning audience. They want us, esoteric researchers, to analyze their symbolism, to speculate on its meaning, and spread these theories over the web. They require the ambiance -- made legitimate because derived from "alternative" sources -- of fear and mystery that we imbue the Games with.

Perhaps we are creating the occult narrative. The masonic sorcerers require our input. This appears to be confirmed in rumours that the theme of "the green and pleasant land," etc. was inspired by Danny Boyle's perusal of conspiracy websites. Regardless of the veracity of these of rumours, we see this kind of thing everywhere.

In movies, in music videos, in concerts, in advertisements, in political campaigns, in fashion, and so on we see the same esoteric symbolism and meaning as is exposed in conspiracy sites. Are the marketing experts and trendsetters simply scouring the net for new and vital memes, realizing that occult and conspiratorial images and suggestions will get their products and clients far more widespread and close attention then conventional promotion? Are we all just unwitting and unpaid stooges in a vast viral marketing scam? Are we only auditory distortions in a giant feedback loop?

If this the case, why bother to continue with this? Why provide TPTB both the creative fodder and the attention that they so desperately crave? Once again, though, we must look beyond the obvious polarities. Are the symbols coming from esoteric researchers which are then co-opted and disseminated by advertisers hungry for attention? Or do corporations and governments intentionally use these esoteric symbols in order to derive magical influence from them, and later we researchers expose these intentions?

This is a chicken and egg question. Could it be, though, that the symbols emerge, as it were, on their own? Does the human collective unconscious, acting like a psychic planetary thermostat, cause symbols and archetypes to well up into consciousness as they are required? This is the suspicion of this blog. The 108-year cycle is much more like a pattern or a rhythm than a plan.

The Forging of the Lapis

Sirius rises with the Sun in Leo, the House of the Sun. The Phoenix presides over the hottest dog-days of summer when Sirius doubles the power of the Sun. Representations of The Sun Card in other tarot decks directly associate it with the Phoenix, and the eight rays of the Sun are often shown in a pattern identical to the crosses of the Union Jack. There is little doubt that The Sun was played during the Closing Ceremony of London 2012.

The following 17th century alchemical print, reproduced in Jung's Psychology and Alchemy and titled "The Mountain of the Adepts," really encapsulates much of the symbolism behind London 2012. The Great Wheel, the London Eye, is shown here as the precessional cycle of the zodiacal ages. This reveals that the Great Work is both individual and collective.

The four elements are also the four directions, the four points of the cross, the Four Apostles, and the four kingdoms of Britain with their respective saints. The Mountain, like Purgatory and like the Glastonbury Tor, rises up from seven tiers -- depicted here as the seven stages of the alchemical process.

The fiery Phoenix arises from the ashes of the consummation of the Sun and the Moon. This consummation is discussed in Dante, in Blake, and throughout the poetic and alchemical tradition. It is the hieros gamos of Dante and Beatrice, The Lamb and the Holy City, Salt and Mercury, the boy and girl dancing together on the mountain of the Sun card.

This Divine Marriage reverses the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the rise of the Phoenix signifies the new Redemption. The final forging of the Lapis, the Philosopher's Stone, is the equivalent to the return of Christ (and also Antichrist). It is also the portal of Da'at.

All symbols, to be effective, must be ambiguous. They must contain at once the entire cosmic cycle of dissolution and coagulation. They must contain day and night, summer and winter. For something to be truly Whole, as Jung continually taught, it must also integrate its Shadow. This is why we go astray when we interpret ritualized events like London 2012 as only the evil Illuminati, or as only the culmination of the Agenda to implement the full New World Order.

There is no doubt that this is a big part of what is going on. But it is not all. Just as on a fairly mainstream level we can interpret the Olympics in two opposing ways -- idealistically as the coming together of all nations in a celebration of human excellence, or cynically as an orgy of nationalism and corporate consumerism only made possible with the implementation of a temporary police state -- esoterically we can also take two perspectives.

Was London transformed into Zion? The green and pleasant land of the opening was by the closing a Union Jack highway intersection. No obvious transcendence there. But it, like 9/11, was also the centre of a planetary mandala of attention -- a mandala that even sucked in hardened and cynical researchers like myself. We also played our role. And that was the point. The Sun card was played and the Ages are completing their shift.

There are only two cards left to complete the 108-year cycle which we can expect to see played by the end of this year. The first will be The Aeon, when the new age is definitively announced, and The Universe is last, when the completion of cycle merges into the completion of all cycles. And with The Universe comes the return of the Woman and the Snake.

Postscript One Hundred and Eight

In a cosmic giggle-type confirmation of these blog posts a crop circle appeared in England on Aug. 26th, probably the most stunning of the entire season, featuring a huge circle with a three dimensional cube inside of it. The cube is showing only three of its faces, but on each face is 36 "squares." In total, then, there are 108 sections.

Additionally, as the three hidden faces of the cube presumably also have 108 divisions then we reach the full 216 years of the Rosicrucian cycle -- 108 years of hidden activity and 108 years of open movement. Is there still any doubt that this year begins the next cycle?

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Back in 2008, I happened to enter a used bookstore while exploring a city during travel. The most fascinating item within the store was one of its customers -- a woman holding her pet snake. She was standing and talking to the owner of the bookstore at the front desk. Beside them was a small bookshelf and on the shelf was a copy of Robert Anton Wilson's cult classic, Cosmic Trigger.

I had read several of Wilson's books, but I had always heard that this was one of his best. For some reason, though, I had never taken the effort to find it. Here it was on the shelf next to the snake woman. I picked it out knowing that I would buy it and began a conversation with the woman and the owner. She seemed vaguely familiar and within a few minutes she let me handle her snake.

I bought the book, but it wasn't until a couple months after returning home that I began to read it. True to its title Cosmic Trigger "triggered" the most amazing synchronicities, many involving the star Sirius, which is a major topic of the book.

Dawn of the Aeon

This post is not directly about Cosmic Trigger, or Sirius, or the snake woman, but will touch on all of these. The theme of this piece takes off from a single sentence of Cosmic Trigger, in a section where Wilson is comparing possible references to Sirius in the work of both Aleister Crowley and James Joyce. Wilson writes,

My fantasy leaped and I asked myself why Joyce set Ulysses in spring 1904, the same time that Crowley was receiving The Book of the Law.

Wilson is referring to an event that Crowley considered to be the highpoint of his
magickal (Crowley's spelling) career -- the transmission of The Book of
the Law by his "Holy Guardian Angel," Aiwass, in March/April of 1904 while visiting Cairo with his wife, Rose.

According to Crowley and his followers, the new Aeon of Horus began with this transmission in 1904. Much has been written about this episode and the start of the new Aeon, but few if any writers have taken up Wilson's suggestion that this event might be linked to June 16th, 1904 -- the day when everything in Joyce's modernist masterpiece, Ulysses, takes place in Dublin. This time and place Joyce presents as a microcosm for all times and places.

That both authors, two of the most influential of the last century, accepted 1904 as a pivotal year is certainly striking, as Wilson noted, but might it only be a coincidence?

A few months after reading Cosmic Trigger, I started to wonder about the relationship
if any between the Aeon beginning in 1904 and the coming Mayan calendar end
date. By simple subtraction I arrived at 108 years (2012-1904=108).

108 is instantly recognizable as a significant number. It plays a very
important role in Buddhist/Hindu philosophy, most notably representing the number of beads in a mala prayer string.

108 degrees is the largest angle of the pentacle, the shape most associated with the Venus cycle. In the Kabbalah, it is known that there are 108 mentions of the word "Zion" in the old Hebrew Bible. 108 years also represents the movement of a degree and a half in the
precessional cycle (72+36). Is this the period of transition between two
Zodiacal Ages? The period of time, for instance, needed to move from
the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius?

Brothers of the Rose and Cross

While wondering about the precise connection between 1904 and 2012, I was able to find some sort of an answer while visiting another used bookstore back home. The
first book that caught my eye was a work on the history of
the Rosicrucians by AMORC head, H. Spencer Lewis.

Opening to the
contents, I noticed a chapter on the 108-year cycle
of the Rosicrucians. In this chapter Lewis explains that Rosicrucian lodges have a
cycle of 108 years of private, secret or esoteric activity followed by 108 years of public, explicit or exoteric activity.

My mind instantly took a leap -- does the 108
years from 1904 to 2012 represent the hidden, incubatory or preparatory
cycle of the New Aeon?

My suspicion grew when I found out that Lewis and Crowley knew each other well. Lewis was a high-ranking member in the OTO, and Crowley at one
point wanted to become the head of AMORC. This means,
with almost certainty, that Crowley would have been well aware of the 108-year cycle and so would have known
that 2012 was 108 years after 1904. Did he plan for this? Given his
attention to fine details of meaning and interconnection, this
definitely would have been of the utmost significance to him.

There is some evidence that Robert Anton Wilson also was aware of the 108-year cycle from 1904 to 2012. Cosmic Trigger, first published in 1977, was one of the first books to feature an analysis of Terrence McKenna's speculations about 2012. Wilson writes,

But the McKenna theory goes far beyond this. There are 64 time-scales in the hologram of our universe, they say, and each one is related to one of the 64 (8 x 8) hexagrams of the I Ching... We are riding not one but 64 evolutionary waves all mounting towards a cosmic Awakening something like the Omega Point suggested by palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin... The McKennas have programmed a computer with their 64 I Ching time systems and the answer is that everything goes jackpot around A.D. 2012.

With his genius for making fantastic connections and finding truly uncanny synchronicities, would RAW have missed the 108 year link between 1904 and 2012 -- two years that he identified in the same book as being very meaningful?

A Helping Hand

But was Joyce aware of the 108-year cycle? There is not much evidence that Joyce and Crowley knew each other, but it is clear that Crowley was an immense fan of Joyce's work. By a curious coincidence, 2012 is also the year that Joyce's work goes into the public domain.

As mentioned, Ulysses takes place in one day -- June 16th, 1904. All over the
world June 16th is now celebrated by Joyceans as Bloomsday, named after the hero of the book, Leopold Bloom. But why did Joyce choose June 16th? The polite story
goes that Joyce chose this date for the book because it was the day of
his first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle.

Wilson
explains in other writings, though, that we know from Joyce's letters that this was
actually the day when Nora gave Jim her first handjob. A sample
of these infamous "dirty letters" can be found here.

Leaving aside Joyce's various proclivities for the moment, there might be a deeper significance to all this. As RAW reveals in Cosmic Trigger:

It
occurred to me that I finally had the secret of the Illuminati. They
were not the fantasy of right-wing paranoids. 'The Illuminati' was one
of the names of an underground mystical movement using sexual yoga in
the Western world.

According to Wilson, figures like
Dee, Bruno, the Rosicrucians, and Crowley himself had nothing to do with
plots to take over the world (can we be sure?), but were sex magicians
who had to protect themselves from persecution from institutions like
the Holy Inquisition. Can we add Joyce to this list? Certainly it seems
that another one of his deep heroes, William Blake, also practiced a
form of sex magic.

Undoubtedly this is all wild speculation. The connection of any of these figures, excluding Crowley, to "sex magic" is bound to be controversial. There are enough clues and hints, though, to make this type of speculation very tantalizing.

Could
there be any other reason why Joyce chose June 16th, 1904? Scholar,
Enrico Terrinoni points out in his book, Occult Joyce, that June 16th,
1885, was the date of the first meeting, presided over by W.B. Yeats, of
the Hermetic Society of Dublin (also founded by Yeats). Yeats later became a
member of the Golden Dawn and at one point held an enormous amount of
influence over the young Joyce.

Joyce, despite his mocking of the
Theosophists and other shallow occultists, had huge respect for
traditional Hermeticism and would have been well aware of this date in Dublin's recent history.

Was this the reason he set his most famous book at this date and/or convinced Nora Barnacle to give him a sex magical handjob? Clearly, we can't take these suggestions entirely seriously.

Patiently Waking

But could Joyce have been aware
of the occult connections that people like Yeats and Crowley were making? Definitely Joyce was aware of the Osiris cycle and
drew upon it heavily in his next book, Finnegans Wake. Related to this, in the Wake we can find
overt references to Sirius and its place in the death and rebirth cycle.

This recalls Crowley's own association with Sirius. His higher initiate order was called
the A:.A:., the Argentium Astrum or Silver Star, which occultist and
Crowley disciple Kenneth Grant identified with Sirius. Crowley was also a high-ranking member of Golden Dawn, and we know that Joyce had close connections with the poet Yeats and
others who were heavily involved in the Golden Dawn.

While Ulysses
is set in June 16th, 1904, some scholars believe that Finnegans
Wake represents a dream in the early morning hours of the 17th of June. The Wake also "takes place" in the same year that Crowley had his revelations in Egypt and
later declared was the first year of the Aeon of Horus. Finnegans Wake,
depicting on one level the resurrection of Osiris/Horus at its
culmination, seems also to mark the start of this new era.

Was Joyce,
like Crowley and other Golden Dawn members, aware of this and did he
encode it into his books? I looked for evidence that Joyce knew about the 108
year cycle in Ulysses, but I couldn't find much (although there is a direct reference to 108 in the "Ithaca" chapter of Ulysses -- clearly alluding to the suitors).

I then discovered that
in Homer's Odyssey, the major source text for Ulysses, Odysseus
comes home and has to kill the 108 suitors of his wife, Penelope. This revenge of Odysseus is the last major event of the Bronze Age. Could these 108 suitors represent the 108 years in a similar shift of the ages ?

By chance, on page 108 of Finnegans Wake we find:

Now, patience; and remember patience is the great thing, and above all things else we must avoid anything like being or be- coming out of patience. A good plan used by worried business folk who may not have had many momentums to master Kung's doctrine of the meang or the propriety codestruces of Carpri- mustimus is just to think of all the sinking fund of patience pos- sessed...

Is
this a call for "patience" in carrying out the "good plan" of the 108
years from 1904-2012? Is this "plan" equivalent to the "Great Work" of the alchemists which, although usually conducted on an individual basis, could also be part of a collective Great Work to assist in the passage from one Age to another? As in the Wake, the primary virtue to succeed in the Great Work is patience.

If there is such a 108-year plan then who is behind it?
It would seem that the Golden Dawn is a good place to start, although the scope of this plan would certainly be much larger than even this important occult organization. It is revealing to look at a list of people directly involved in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

In
addition to Yeats and Crowley, members included authors Gustav Meyrink and Bram Stoker,
Allan Bennett, who introduced Buddhism to the West, Charles Williams, who formed the Inklings with C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, Algernon
Blackwood, who heavily influenced H.P. Lovecraft, and so on. The combined
cultural influence of these people on the 20th century to the present is
gigantic. Is it because of this influence that the Hermetic philosophy is now everywhere, to the point where it seems to be built
into the structure of events? Is it there by design?

The Plan?

Does
the whole of the last century, involving two world wars and the Cold War, the
Great Depression, the rise of communism and fascism, the psychedelic
revolution, the New Age, jazz and rock, abstract art, the computer
revolution, feminism, the internet, 9/11, the war on terror, etc., follow the course of some massive, unimaginable -- almost impossible --
synchronistic art project? Are things somehow unfolding according to a Plan? Are the Masters of the Rose and Cross about to finally present
themselves in the sunrise of the New Aeon?

Crazed fantasies, obviously.

If there is such a Plan, if the architects of the Great Work were patiently working behind the scenes to fix events in just the right way, then certainly we would expect to find traces of it beyond the work of just two authors. Are there any other events of 1904 that might support these frenzied conclusions?

Square and the Wheel

Another possible clue to 1904 is One Times Square in New York. This
building was completed in 1904 and had its first fireworks display on
New Year's 1904/1905. The Big Apple dropping ceremony began in 1907 and
this ritual continues to this day. Most people now think of Times Square
when they think of the New Year's celebration. It is the original modern celebration of Sirius -- which always culminates at midnight on January 1st -- and it began in 1904.

Another 1904 event that almost certainly would be linked to the 108-year cycle, should this cycle actually exist, are the Olympic Games of that year held in St. Louis, Missouri. It increasingly seems that the modern Olympic Games form an occult narrative that continues and progresses every four years. The 1904 St. Louis Games, only the third modern Olympics, represents the start of the 108-year cycle. These games seem pretty insignificant historically,
but they merit further and deeper research. St. Louis is, after all, the
"Gateway to the West".

The 1904 Olympics, which were combined with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, had as a central attraction the giant Ferris Wheel first unveiled at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.This original Ferris wheel was constructed to rival the Eiffel Tower, another blatant freemasonic monument. The capacity of this great Wheel reveals its secret. It had 36 passenger cars each able to hold a maximum of 60 people. At full capacity, then, the Ferris Wheel could take up to 2160 people.

2160, of course, is the traditional number of years in one astrological age. Does the Ferris Wheel represent the 2160 years of the Piscean Age turning on the wheel of the Great Year and shifting to the Age of Aquarius? Does the fact that the Ferris Wheel was reconstructed for the last time at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis signify that the 108 years of the transition between these two ages had begun?

In the second post on this topic we'll see how this Ferris wheel symbolism was dramatically repeated during the Closing Ceremony on London 2012. The 108-year cycle has completed and the great wheel has shifted into a new age.

Tightening Gyres

As in Terrence McKenna's Timewave Zero theory, it appears as if the transitional periods are increasingly compressed, in a fractal pattern, into shorter and shorter durations. On a wider scale there is the degree and a half movement of 108 years
from 1904 to 2012, perhaps indicating the movement from the Age of Pisces to the Age of
Aquarius.

A smaller fractal pattern, though, is from 9/11/2001 to 12/21/2012. We are
at the end of an eleven year transition period, roughly coinciding with the eleven year sunspot cycle. 2012
itself represents an even shorter transition period, and London 2012 ritualized the entire process. We are in transit
across the Abyss between Ages. The recent rituals all indicate this. 2012 certainly is the year.

Like
the Renaissance magi, the powers that be are using the symbols of the
celestial world, what Giordano Bruno called the Shadows of Ideas, in order to
manipulate and have sway over this elemental plane. The obvious
overlay of technological, scientific materialism really veils the deeply
held occult beliefs of the elite. Materialism is projected, as Blake taught, to disallow
our being the masters of our own imaginations.

Because
of this, everything is being aligned on Earth to reflect and thus
receive the patterns and energies of the planets and stars in their cosmic cycles.
The Maya chose the 2012 end date for a reason. The alignment of the
winter solstice sun with the galactic equator, which has been
happening for the last couple of decades, is only part of this
greater alignment.

The biggest astronomical event of this year was the return Venus transit (the first transit in this pair being in
2004). This is the only year during the winter solstice alignment period
when this return transit takes place. The importance that the Maya placed on Venus and its cycles is well known. It would be no surprise, then, that the return Venus Transit, in the same year as a galactic alignment on the Winter Solstice, represents the second part of the
celestial marker the Maya used to determine the end of the Age.

As Jung taught, though, the turning of the Ages does not really have much at all to do with real, physical energy emanating from the cosmos. The relative positions of the planets in the Zodiac are merely like the hands on the clock which tell us the time. And the "time" which they indicate are phases within a great cycle of our collective consciousness.

Switchback

The
turning of the Ages will be accompanied by a reversal of the collective
psyche, a psychic poleshift if you will. Our cultural and historic exploration of dualistic and materialistic modes of thought and expression have reached their natural limits. At any moment now, we are bound to reach the point of what Jung called the enantiodromia -- the process whereby a catastrophic instant occurs when any extreme suddenly flips to its opposite. It is the moment when the Shadow, all of the forces and ideas suppressed and repressed by history, surface at once. This is the point that we have reached.

This is widely known at higher levels. The more and more blatant rituals we witness in the media are all about the
elite trying to maintain their power games through the course of this
shift. They have been preparing for many decades, but as their rule is
fundamentally based on the preservation of the Ego, and in suppression of the Shadow, they seem bound to fail in this attempt.

But
it is not as cut and dry as all of this. There are also "whites hats"
among the elite and on the margins who have their hands and wands
in these rituals and are aiming for the opening of the perception of
everyone. We also have the ability to use these rituals for our own
purposes. If we don't absorb these spectacles as passive media
consumers, or as paranoid conspiracy theorists, we have the opportunity
to creatively use them to shift ourselves.

The role of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of Crowley, of Joyce, of Blake, of the woman and her snake in all of this is airy theorizing. I'd like to think they're helping us, all Jedi-style, so that every one of us can make the shift. The truth is that I do not know.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

In 2006, the Aurora Dark Knight shooting suspect, James E. Holmes, made a short science presentation outlining his research in "temporal illusions" and the perception of time.

As Holmes, at that time a recent high school graduate, explains,
"temporal illusions" are caused by the subjective interpretation of the
passage of time. In his experiment participants hit a key and an image
appears. Holmes progressively lengthened the interval by
microseconds between event A, hitting the key, and event B, the
appearance of the image.

This lengthening was brief enough to be consciously indiscernible to the participant. After a few repetitions the delay was suddenly eliminated and participants had the illusion of the image appearing even before they pressed the key. The effect appeared to precede the cause -- B came before A. This is a "temporal illusion."

In this short clip, the study of the subjective experience of time is explained in greater depth by Holmes' "mentor", John Jacobson (Jacobson vehemently denied that he ever acted as mentor to Holmes after the shooting).

The scientific relevance of this research is beyond the scope of this post. Instead, the present article will explore temporal illusion as metaphor.

Rabbits and Heavenly Hosts

In a way, the phenomenon is very similar to common optical illusions. In optical illusions pictures appear to be moving when they are not, shapes appear larger when they are actually smaller than adjacent shapes, and a single image will alternate between two contradictory objects depending on perception.

In a classic optical illusion the viewer sees either a duck or a rabbit. It is very difficult to see both at once. This kind of optical illusion recalls William Blake's famous lines about the rising sun:

"When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like
a guinea?" O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host
crying "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty."

Blake does not mean to say he only sees a host of angels when he looks at the sun. This is viewed as a form of craziness even for Blake. He is able to see both a golden disk and the heavenly host. To only see the prosaic golden disk, though, is another form of craziness -- and perhaps a form that is even more dangerous.

Blake calls this "single vision and Newton's sleep" -- the mechanistic, materialistic, literal-minded, narrow view of the world and life that is even more prevalent in our own time than in Blake's day.

Blake advocates "double vision" -- the ability to view things equally with reason and the imagination at all times. This is an active and creative participation in life as opposed to the reactive and passive perspective that only accepts that which is explained by science.

Double vision is to see the rabbit and the duck at once. It is to accept that A comes before B at the same time as A comes after B. This post is an attempt at double vision.

Seven Layers of Dream

The alleged Dark Knight shooter's theory of temporal illusion has been compared by several people to another of Christopher Nolan's movies -- Inception. Inception, like The Matrix, explores the idea that this world may all just be a dream. Unlike The Matrix, though, which is basically dualistic in structure -- there is the matrix and there is the real world, Inception presents multiple dream layers and casts doubt on there being a "real" world at all.

We all know that in dreams our perception of time is incredibly altered. We might have an entire adventure in the 5-minute interval between the buzz tones of our alarm clock. Inception plays with this idea and it shows that within seconds of one dream layer, hours of action are occurring in another.

One fan has found seven such layers in the film. Others have only been able to identify five layers or less, but I think seven layers is right. Seven is a number that will constantly recur in this analysis. There are seven chakras in the Indian system, seven planets used in medieval alchemy. All of these systems of sevens can be linked, as we'll see.

In order to give themselves enough time to perform inception, the planting of new thoughts into a dreaming mind, it is decided that the 12 hour flight from Sydney to Los Angeles would provide the perfect opportunity to delve into multiple dream layers.

Lost Between Hell and Heaven

A flight from Sydney to Los Angeles? Where have we heard this before? In the extremely popular television series, Lost, the survivors of a passenger jet crash, on a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles, are forced to live on a mysterious and supernatural island in the South Pacific.

A persistent fan theory about Lost is that the island is a kind of Purgatory, an in-between state where the borders between the regular categories of Being are blurred, and individuals are destined to wait and purge themselves of past sins. This theory has been so widespread that it has provoked an official denial by the makers of the series.

However, the theory seems to be supported by Dante's own description of Purgatory as a mysterious island in the middle of a hemisphere of water (like the Pacific), which is at the exact antipodes of Jerusalem. If we check an antipodes map, we find that the antipodes of Jerusalem, or Zion, is in the South Pacific in a place where conceivably a jet flying from Sydney to Los Angeles could have been blown off course. It is almost as if Dante had visited the Lost island in his visions.

If the Lost island represents Purgatory, then Sydney also would represent Hell and L.A. is surprisingly, Heaven. It interesting that in Finnegans Wake, the two "hero twin" brothers of the book, Shem and Shawn, are also associated with Australia (Sydney) and America (L.A.). Joyce explicitly corresponds these two to Hell and Heaven respectively, and the two brothers with Lucifer and Michael.

For the Irish of Joyce's time, Australia was seen as a place were Irish
convicts were exiled, and America was a place were people could become
rich. Ireland, in this way, is Purgatory -- an in-between realm of
dreams and nightmares. This is also the realm of the Wake itself.

Among the many contrary attributes that Joyce corresponds with the twin brothers is with Mercius (Shem) and Justius (Shawn). These are the two pillars of Solomon's Temple, Jachin (Mercy) and Boaz (Justice) that were discussed in a previous post.

Many symbols come together here. Australia represents a prison land, Hell, whereas America represents freedom. The Lost island is Purgatory where the path to the middle pillar, through the portal of Da'at, is also located. In the analysis of this blog the Olympic Games now occurring in London, following the 70-day journey through the underworld, also represent the ascent of Mount Purgatory. In addition, the journey through the 7 layers of dreaming in Inception, also occurring on a flight from Sydney to L.A. (the City of Angels), depicts the movement through Purgatory.

Into the Labyrinth

Inception has also been compared with the classical myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The movie's character, Ariadne, provides a direct link between the two. In Inception, Ariadne is the designer of the constructed dream landscapes, while in the myth she provides Theseus with the thread needed to escape the Labyrinth. Dom, the Leo DiCaprio character in the film, acts as Theseus and the Minotaur/monster he must face is his psychotic/suicidal wife, Mal -- the Guardian of the Threshold.

The seven layers of dream are themselves the Labyrinth. It is a direct synchronistic hit here that classic Cretan labyrinths, and Theseus' labyrinth is one of these, had exactly seven courses.

Seven, we should recall, is the number of terraces on the Mountain of Purgatory, corresponding with the seven deadly sins which must be transformed into the seven holy virtues. There are also seven similar spiralling terraces on the Glastonbury Tor. In Brueghel's famous representation of Nimrod's false Mountain of Purgatory, the Tower of Babel, seven layers of the incomplete tower are also shown.

The dream journey depicted in Inception, as well as the teaching of the seven chakras and the seven internal planets of alchemy, reveal that this is as much an inner journey as it is an outer journey up the World Mountain or an adventure on the World Island. The metaphors, whether internal or external, are the same. The point is that only those who are able to fully purge their selfish desires before the portal of Da'at are able to continue on to Paradise.

The Circle of Disclosure

A fascinating comparison was made between Brueghel's painting of Babel with a similar seven-layered crop circle that appeared in England this June.

There have been several interpretations of this formation, but the most striking is its connection with a polar clock reading for 19:43:53on Saturday, 4th August 2012. It does not matter for the purposes of this blog if this is the correct reading of this crop circle. Nor is the identity of the circle-makers important here. It is the story that is fascinating, and in this story we can learn a lot.

August 4th, because of this and other crop circles, plus several other messages, was a date that spread like wildfire throughout the web. It was to be the day when the Galactic Federation of Light, no longer able to idly witness humanity's willful destruction of the biosphere, decided to reveal itself openly to the world at the London Olympics. Several transmissions channeled by various mediums and other "lightworkers" spread this message. Here is a sample:

SaLuSa
30-July-2012

Dear Ones as
you are learning from a number of sources, the point has been reached when
Divine instructions have been given that action shall be taken without delay to
announce our presence. We have shown extreme patience and given your leaders
plenty of opportunity to take the steps called for to release you from the
control of the Illuminati. We know that they too are also like many people in
fear of them, but that has to be put aside to allow the truth to come out. The
Olympics is the window that is being given world attention, and we cannot think
of a better way to make it known. Time is fast running away and we must be given
the opportunity to make ourselves known to you.

Some will
still choose to disbelieve our messages, but that is their free choice which we
honor. However, there is the important matter of Ascension and much to do in
these final days, and we cannot wait any longer. Our allies have gone as far as
can be reasonably expected, and they need complete freedom to go surging ahead
with their final responsibilities. So very shortly the clearing up process will
be able to proceed without further hindrance from the dark Ones. Your lives are
to some extent to be turned upside down, although many people are already
prepared for it. We hope that some leaders will heed our request and not wait
until we are forced to intervene, but if we have to we are fully ready....

I am SaLuSa
from Sirius, and many of you will know already that this coming week is one that
is a last chance for your leaders to respond to our demands. If we are ignored
yet again, we shall go forward ourselves, and make ourselves known in such a way
that our presence can no longer be ignored or hidden. Yes, we have the deadline
Saturday the 4th. of August in mind and no longer, before we take matters into
our own hands.

So what happened? Apparently nothing. Apparently the Galactic Federation of alien civilizations decided that humanity was not yet ready for first contact or full disclosure. We are still too dominated by "the dark ones" and they would make far too much trouble if such an event took place. Perhaps, as we'll see, they were totally right.

The language of this kind of transmission is fascinating in itself. Why do these messages read like a official declaration from a district school board that they are about to amalgamate a wayward local school board? The very phrase "Galactic Federation of Light" creeps many people out. The Federation sounds like the NWO on a cosmic scale. Maybe this is only how our limited three-dimensional (or "density") consciousness perceives it. I am open to this possibility.

The hopes for an August 4th disclosure date were fueled by widespread reports of UFO sightings during the climax of the Opening Ceremony. These "sightings" in themselves, however, were deeply contentious. While people were very adamant that they were in fact UFOs, many others dismissed them entirely as being sightings of the Goodyear Blimp.

The Non-Consensus Event (NCE)

This may be a good opportunity to briefly introduce a new concept, the Non-Consensus Event (NCE). In recent years at every UFO "sighting," at every "paranormal" occurrence, at every claim of "conspiracy," at every account of mass "synchronicity," giant and bitter flames wars have broken out both in and outside of the web between the hordes of "true believers" and equal masses of self-styled "skeptics" and "debunkers."

In almost none of these instances is a consensus ever reached. People become more and more polarized and hardened in their stances. This lack of consensus makes it almost impossible to discuss these events without falling into one camp or another. You are required to decide if you are a "believer" or a "debunker."

The concept of the NCE allows the intellectual liberty to suspend judgement. In Blake's terms, it allows for "double vision." We are enabled to see the rabbit and the duck, the UFO and the Blimp, the alien disclosure and just another day. The concept of the NCE (nice!) will be developed as this blog progresses. The in-between, twilight realm of Purgatory is dominated by the NCE. All consensus is breaking down and dreams are becoming indistinguishable from "reality."

Back to the Garden

As Dante makes his arduous trek up the Mountain of Purgatory towards the Earthly Paradise of Eden, he is beset by a number of sometimes disturbing dreams and visions. At times he is confused if he is in Purgatory, back in Hell, or perhaps even on Earth again. This confusion of categories is a key characteristic of Purgatory.

When he finally reaches the summit of the Mountain, and reluctantly passes through the burning fires of Lust -- the fiery sword of the Covering Cherub in Blake's poetry, he enters the Garden of Eden. It is here that he has his most spectacular vision. The chariot of his beloved, Beatrice, appears in his sky in a vast rainbow-lit pageant accompanied by a host of angels and other divine beings.

Dante explicitly compares this vision with Ezekiel's vision of the chariot, and St. John's revelations on Patmos. It has been pointed out several times that if these phenomena were witnessed in modern times they would certainly be interpreted as UFOs. This begs certain questions. Were they UFOs? Or, alternatively, are modern "alien" encounters actually visitations of angelic beings? There is no consensus. Once again, the NCE rears its ugly head.

As Dante, ascending up from both Hell and Purgatory, represents the figure of Christ, Beatrice is the Church, the New Jerusalem. Her vast pageantry is the descent of the Holy City at the end of the Age. Eventually Dante is reunited with Beatrice at the foot of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is exactly the site of Da'at and the coming together of the couple in Holy Marriage, the fire of Union beyond the fire of Lust, reverses the Fall. Knowledge is regained.

Dante and Beatrice are surrounded by seven nymphs who are bearing the seven rainbow-hued torches of the original chariot pageant.
The seven flames could be said to combine in the lighting of the Cauldron of the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage of the Lamb and his Bride. This Fire is the fire of consummation in several senses according to Blake. It is sexual union, the fusion of all opposites, but it is also the fire of Revelation, the unveiling of all Mystery, as well as the fire of Revolution -- the total burning away of the Old World to activate the seeds of the New. All has been cleansed, purged and forgiven.

This ritual of the seven torches has recently been revealed to us all.

Will the hieros gamos take place at the culmination of London 2012? Will Zion finally descend? Will the motherships arrive? Will it represent a Redemption or a further Fall? All we can be sure of is that, like the Opening Ceremony, there will be no consensus as to what it all means. We all will witness another NCE.

Visions of La Purga

The otherworldly visions of Dante, Ezekiel and St. John have also been compared to the multi-layered psychedelic voyages of shamans and others while experiencing the effects of ayahuasca and other strong plant compounds. Ayahuasca itself is called La Purga, the purge, in South America as it is physically, mentally and spiritually eliminates impurities. It provides a strong glimpse of Purgatory.

The visions of ayahuasca, as in Inception and in the visions of Dante, etc., also reveal multiple layers of reality at once. They more than double Blake's "double vision." Anthropologist
Michael Harner has a given a now classic account of this type of multi-dimensional trip -- his first experience with La Purga:

I began to see two strange boats wafting back and forth, floating in the
air towards me, coming closer and closer. They slowly combined to form a
single vessel with a huge dragon headed prow, not unlike that of a
Viking ship. Set amidships was a square sail. Gradually, as the boat
gently floated back and forth above me, I heard a rhythmic swishing sound
and saw that it was a giant galley with several hundred oars moving
back and forth in cadence with sound.

I became conscious, too, of the most beautiful singing I have ever heard
in my life, high-pitched and ethereal, emanating from a myriad of
voices on board the galley. As I looked more closely at the deck, I
could make out large numbers of people with heads of blue jays and the
bodies of humans, not unlike the bird-headed god of ancient Egyptian
tomb paintings. At the same time, some energy-essence began to float
from my chest up into the boat. Although I believed myself to be an
atheist, I was completely certain that I was dying and that the
bird-headed people had come to take my soul away on the boat. While the
soul-flow continued from my chest, I was aware that the extremities of
my body were growing numb....

I became aware of my brain. I felt-physically-that it had become
compartmentalized into four separate and distinct levels. At the
uppermost surface was the observer and commander, which was conscious of
the condition of my body, and was responsible for the attempt to keep
my heart going.. It perceived, but purely as a spectator, the visions
emanating from what seemed to be the nether portions of my brains.
Immediately below the topmost layer, I felt a numbed layer, which seemed
to be put out of commission by the drug- it just wasn’t there. The next
level down was the source of my visions, including the soul boat.

Many individuals tripping on ayahuasca have had visions of a city descending from the sky, much like St. John's dream of the New Jerusalem. Is reality in general becoming more like a psychedelic trip? Are we all experiencing, or just about to experience, La Purga?

A Tempest is Coming

All of this matches very well with "the Isles of Wonder" theme of the Opening Ceremony. Danny Boyle's major source for the ceremony was Shakespeare's Tempest. This play is a tale of an enchanted island which itself can be viewed as being a representation of Purgatory.

Prospero's enemies are confronted by their past sins and are forgiven, the spirits enslaved by Prospero are liberated, and the Magus himself renounces his magic powers and eventually he and his daughter are freed from the island. Everyone has been "purged."

In a sense this all comes full circle in Nolan's Dark Knight Rises. The film can be viewed as an inversion of the play, just as the Inferno is an inversion of Purgatory.

The characters of Dark Knight Rises find direct but inverted counterparts in the Tempest. Prospero's daughter is named Miranda, and the pseudonym of Talia Ghul is also Miranda Tate. With this everything else falls into place. Ra's al Ghul, a powerful magician and leader of the League of Shadows, is a direct parallel to the wizard, Prospero. Both use their powers to seek justice, although Prospero is able to forgive in the end.

Caliban, who we witnessed as the real star of the Opening Ceremony, is Bane. Like Prospero's opinion of Caliban, al Ghul also calls Bane "just a devil"in the movie. This is despite Bane's favourable relationship with his daughter, Miranda/Talia. Caliban also has a complicated relationship with Miranda which Shakespeare, to an extent, leaves open to interpretation. Calibane?

If the Tempest , like Lost, portrays Purgatory, then Dark Knight Rises represents its inversion, the Inferno. Hell is shown directly in the film as a Dantesque Pit where only those fully in touch with their fear are able to escape.

Only four people are ever able to exit from the Pit. Talia and Batman find the physical and spiritual strength to scale its walls, Ra's al Ghul unknowingly trades his own freedom for that of his lover, and Bane is rescued by the League.

But who is Batman in this scheme of things? Does he represent Miranda's new lover Ferdinand in the Tempest, or is he, as an initiate of the League of Shadows like Bane, the non-shadow side of Caliban -- the enchanted and eloquent Caliban of the "Isles of Wonder" speech?

When finally surfacing from the Pit, the first thing the prisoners see is the Mehranghar Fort of Jodhpur, India. This is a major clue for the whole mystery, as we'll see. The Fort itself has seven gates -- yet another symbol of Purgatory.

Prospero and his daughter are restored their rightful Dukedom -- Jerusalem is reestablished. Ra's Ghul and his daughter seek justice in another way -- the total destruction of Gotham, the fallen and corrupted Jerusalem AKA Babylon. They invoke the cleansing fires of apocalypse, revolution and revenge as opposed to forgiveness.

The Tempest ends with the promise of a just city, Zion. Dark Knight Rises ends with the near destruction of a city of corruption, Babylon or the fallen Jerusalem. Are they the same? Which is closer to Blake? Blake also called London the fallen Jerusalem, but did he advocate its entire destruction? We can safely say that he did not. While the poet did advocate even apocalyptic revolution, he hated war and was keenly aware of the greater power of forgiveness and love.

In Dark Knight Rises, as was mentioned in an earlier post, an important part of the plot concerns a nuclear reactor that will detonate in 23 days. 23 days after the Dark Knight Rises premier shooting in Aurora is Aug. 12th, the day of the Closing Ceremony for London 2012. Will something that became activated at Aurora finally "detonate" on the 12th?

Of course this is yet another date, yet another prediction of doom or bliss like 5/20, 7/27 and 8/4. And what happened on these dates? Nothing that anyone expected. The really interesting thing about this is that people, and apparently many people, continue to be sucked into these dates, believing that something big will happen. Why? Do we all not have the feeling, consciously or unconsciously, that the end is near?

A Sirius Epilogue

While Disclosure did not happen on Aug. 4th, something potentially big involving disclosure did happen the very next day. I'm referring to the tragic shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. Almost immediately researchers noted several synchronicities connecting this shooting and the Dark Knight shooting in Aurora on 7/20.

The Chicago Tribune and other news agencies reported on Aug. 6th that,

Police had cordoned off a long stretch of East Holmes Avenue and Cudahy
police Patrol Officer Aaron Agenten confirmed that the FBI agents were
on the street, leading the investigation.

It is certainly a striking coincidence that the Wisconsin shooter, apparently a racist skinhead with former ties to an elite military psyops unit, lived on a street, E. Holmes Avenue, which has the same name as the alleged Aurora shooter, James E. Holmes.

Other syncs include the fact that the two shootings occurred 16 days apart from each other, and the Aurora attack took place at the Century 16 multiplex theatre. The Aurora shooting happened seven days before the Opening Ceremony of London 2012. The Oak Creek shooting happened seven days before the Closing Ceremony will take place on Aug. 12th.

By far the weirdest synchronicity from the perspective of this blog is that the president of the Temple, Satwant Singh Kaleka -- who died a hero by valiantly trying to defend his people, was the father of filmmaker Armardeep Kaleka. Kaleka is currently involved in directing a major documentary project with the controversial advocate for disclosure, Steven Greer. Almost inconceivably in the light of what this blog has been discussing, this documentary is called Sirius.

Greer has described this documentary as being the next step in disclosure, and has repeatedly claimed that releasing this information could be dangerous. It did not take long for many on the web to conclude that the shooting was a professional hit intended to send a message to Kaleka to axe the project. Scary stuff.

A Sikh temple is called a gurdwara, which means "gateway to the Guru." This recalls the Gateway High School, Home of the Olympians, in Aurora where witnesses were questioned by the police after the attack. Aurora, or dawn, is traditionally viewed as a type of gateway, but as this blog has pointed out the oak of Oak Creek is also a gateway.

Capping this all off, as the excellent Twilight Language blog has noted, is the fact that the Mehranghar Fort, the site of the Inferno-like Pit of Dark Knight, was originally constructed by Sikh kings.

In summary, then, we have Holmes, Sirius, disclosure, the gateway, the oak, and the fort shown in Dark Knight, as well as important date links, connecting both of these events together and pointing them both towards London 2012.

Once again, what is going on? It is entirely possible that we are finding patterns that are not really there. We can never rule this out. Synchronicity itself is a type of "temporal illusion." A synchronicity is by definition subjective, the experiencer imbues the experience with meaning, therefore there is only the subjective "illusion" of a temporal connection between events. This connection may not objectively exist. All synchronicities are Non-Consensus Events.

The fact that we assign meaning to events, though, does not make them any less important. For Blake it is only the Imagination of the individual that is important. As we make the passage through the Abyss, up Mount Purgatory to the gateway in the World Tree, between two Ages, we must remember that our imaginations help to shape events. If we dwell on darkness we will find darkness.

All Shall Dissolve

This blog has covered many dark topics, but the intention has always been to show that light and darkness exist together. There is no Summer without Winter, and no Fall without a Redemption.

Like the Wake, we aim to demonstrate that the whole cycle is happening always at every point. Only by realizing this can we liberate our own imaginations from what Blake calls "the same dull round." To do this is to realize not only that we create "temporal illusions," our subjective experience of time, but also that illusion itself is temporary. And there soon comes a time when all mysteries will be revealed.

Or as the other famous speech of the Tempest unveils to us:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.